Better AI Starts With Better Verification

Halluminate (YC S25) is building reinforcement learning environments and benchmarks to help AI models do knowledge work beyond coding, starting with finance. With a team of fewer than 10 people, the company works with four of the top five closed-source US AI labs and recently raised a $30 million Series A led by Oak HC/FT. In this Fireside, co-founders Jerry Wu and Wyatt Marshall sit down with YC Partner Jon Xu to share how testing browser agents led them to building simulations where models practice tasks like completing financial spreadsheets. They explain why accurate scoring and expert review matter more than sheer task volume, and how weak checks can teach models to take shortcuts. They also discuss their vision for simulated companies where teams of AI agents learn to work together. https://halluminate.ai Chapters: 00:00 — Halluminate’s Pivot From Evals to Training Environments 03:48 — Teaching AI to Do Financial Work 07:13 — Why Verification Matters More Than Volume 10:13 — From Finance to Simulated Companies 13:30 — AI Safety and Building the Team Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

Jon XuhostJerry WuguestWyatt Marshallguest

Oct 1, 202616mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: October 1, 2026
Duration: 16m
Channel: YC Root Access
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Halluminate (YC S25) is building reinforcement learning environments and benchmarks to help AI models do knowledge work beyond coding, starting with finance. With a team of fewer than 10 people, the company works with four of the top five closed-source US AI labs and recently raised a $30 million Series A led by Oak HC/FT. In this Fireside, co-founders Jerry Wu and Wyatt Marshall sit down with YC Partner Jon Xu to share how testing browser agents led them to building simulations where models practice tasks like completing financial spreadsheets. They explain why accurate scoring and expert review matter more than sheer task volume, and how weak checks can teach models to take shortcuts. They also discuss their vision for simulated companies where teams of AI agents learn to work together. https://halluminate.ai Chapters: 00:00 — Halluminate’s Pivot From Evals to Training Environments 03:48 — Teaching AI to Do Financial Work 07:13 — Why Verification Matters More Than Volume 10:13 — From Finance to Simulated Companies 13:30 — AI Safety and Building the Team Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

SPEAKERS

Jon Xu
host
Host/interviewer on YC Root Access (Y Combinator).
Jerry Wu
guest
Co-founder of Halluminate, building RL environments/benchmarks for frontier model post-training and evaluation.
Wyatt Marshall
guest
Co-founder of Halluminate, focused on technical aspects of RL environments and verifiers for knowledge-work tasks.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of YC Root Access, featuring Jon Xu and Jerry Wu, Better AI Starts With Better Verification explores halluminate trains better AI by building verifiable RL work environments Halluminate builds frontier RL training environments and benchmarks that help improve AI performance in non-coding knowledge-work domains, starting with financial services.

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